Hunting the Hair and Other Pursuits – Con Ó Drisceoil

Hunting the hair, and other pursuits

CD Included

Craft Recordings, Dublin 2018

ISBN 978-1-5272-1998-4

€25.00

LOVERS of humorous verse can satisfy their taste with the work of many writers. Noel Coward, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Tom Lehrer spring instantly to mind. But Ireland has its own tradition of comic song, with many skilled writers keeping the nation laughing. Prominent among these is Con Ó Drisceoil. He is a fan of the writers already mentioned, but he writes in the deadpan style of those more local song-makers that he admires, in the rich Munster traditions of Muscraí and Sliabh Luachra.

In his own self-deprecating account of his writing, he aims for ‘cheap laughs’. But these are produced through outrageously-contrived rhymes allied with a meticulously strict attention to metrical precision, all applied to ordinary situations that have been made epic through his imagination. A case of ‘making The Iliad from a local row’!

To use a phrase of Tom Lehrer’s, cheap laughs may be just what we ‘desperately need today in these trying times of crisis and universal brouhaha’. These songs will provide many deceptively cheap laughs.

CON Ó DRISCEOIL was already celebrated, throughout Ireland – “The Spoons Murder and other mysteries” – was published in 2006. His talent for creating comic songs was recognised in 2009 when he was awarded the TG4 Gradam Ceoil as Composer of the Year.

As well as being a singer he is a upon which he specialises in the music of Cork and Kerry. In this work he has the good fortune to enjoy, in the group The Four Star Trio, the company of musicians Johnny McCarthy and Pat Ahern, with whom he has released two CDs, “The Square Triangle” and “Magnetic South”.

In the company of Hammy Hamilton and Seamus Creagh, his playing and singing can also be enjoyed on the CD “It’s No Secret”.